amusedIn the meantime, we finished watching season two of Relative Race! (Season one isn't available on the BYUtv app.) All I can say is it's really good, you guys. If you have any access to BYUtv (I believe they have a website with full episodes of stuff), I definitely recommend checking it out!
And now, let's talk about Anime Expo some more! We're on part two of the Mamoru Miyano Marathon--the Uta no Prince-sama movie premiere! Oooohhh!
This time they didn't have any pre-movie teasers, they just got right to the
And after the first three songs is where we started to have some trouble, because the thing is, we never really got attached to any of the Uta-Pri characters, which may be why we drifted away from it in the middle of season two. ...Especially because season two was about Cecil and Quartet Night, and if Cecille and Camille heard me say this they might disown us, but we do not care for any of those guys. (You may remember, Cecille got her code name because her favorite is Cecil, and I didn't say this but Camille got her code name because her favorite is Camus from Quartet Night. We might like Ranmaru better now that we have a better appreciation for Tatsuhisa Suzuki, but we didn't at the time we started watching Uta-Pri season two.)
Anyway, after the first three songs, they had every single one of the eighteen performers give an opening comment, and since we don't have much attachment to any of them, we were kind of like, "That's nice, let's get on with the fancy choreography." That was my favorite part--the choreography. And it all looked like it was done with motion capture, which made me think of the fact that the voice actors have given concerts, and it made me wonder if the voice actors did the motion capture. But then I was like, "Nah, they're not professional dancers." Then Athena asked me if I thought any of Team Mamo (the guys who do the backup dancing at Mamoru Miyano's concerts) were on the motion capture team, so you can bet we kept an eye out for that when the credits started rolling. And sure enough, it looked like at least a few of Team Mamo was listed. So whenever you go to a Mamoru Miyano concert, you can see the Uta-Pri characters dancing. Tadah!
The eighteen guys then broke up into six trios and took turns doing songs, and that was fun. Then they all had to comment on them again. I mean, I've never been to a real concert, but even I know that's probably something musicians do at concerts, is talk about the songs. ...Maybe the fact that it was animated, and therefore scripted rather than spontaneous, made it more tedious. But the hardcore Uta-Pri fans loved it, so it was all for the best. Of course they had a lot of comments that were clearly thrown in there for the fujoshi fans, and they all screamed when those comments were made. I was a little disappointed because we were there for Miyano-kun, and in his character's trio song, they didn't have fancy choreography, because they got on hoverboards and flew all over the audience instead. If it were a live concert, that definitely would have been impressive, but since it was animated, it was like, that's not even hard.
...I don't really remember what happened after that. There was more singing, of course. And more talking. I think they had each of the groups tell their history? And they had goodbye comments, and then they had their big finale, which was pretty much like all the manga Disney nighttime spectacular parodies, like a mix between the Electrical Parade and any show they do at DisneySea. And we're like, "But guys, your Fantasmic! isn't really that good..." They just rode around on giant light-up floats through the audience, and they weren't even doing fancy choreography. (As you can see, I'm not impressed unless there is fancy choreography.)
And then they played my favorite song of the whole movie! "Encore"! It was the end credits song, but that's not why I liked it. I did enjoy the movie; I just thought it was tedious when they were talking. But the thing is, Encore is a super pretty song, and Miyano-kun sings it so very well. ...I may also have been able to appreciate it more because the screaming had abated somewhat. There were a couple of songs in the movie that I think maybe I really liked, but they weren't able to register in my memory very well.
After the movie, they brought out the panelists--the host from Sentai Filmworks, the interpreter who had a little bit too much fun and sometimes seemed to forget that many people in the audience didn't know Japanese and so didn't understand what she was commenting on (it's not entirely her fault; there was a large portion of the audience who reacted loudly before she had to interpret anything), and the voice actors--Takuma Terashima and Mamoru Miyano! Woohoo! And oh my goodness, they were both super adorable in different ways. Miyano-kun constantly had an enormous smile plastered all over his face, and Terashima-san (I'm not sure if he's older or younger than me) just kind of radiated cuteness, but not like frilly cuteness, like a more masculine cuteness. I'm too tired to explain the difference.
...I may also be too tired to remember how this panel went, so I might have to report on it tomorrow. But if you really can't wait, they posted a report on Anime News Network (which I might go look at to jog my memory), but it seemed to have all the emotion drained out of it, so you won't be too bored if you read that and then come back and read my report.
Today I'm thankful for getting to see a Relative Race finale, the girl who sat next to us at the Uta-Pri movie and shared her rose candies with us, getting to enjoy the fun enthusiasm of the Uta-Pri fans as we watched the animated concert, Page keeping an eye on the cat situation for us, and the lovely cool breeze blowing in from the window.
